Excerpt from Bragg’s Build Strong Healthy Feet — Chap­ter 9
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Once you start your walk­ing pro­gram, it’s extremely impor­tant to stick with it if you’re look­ing for long-term health and fit­ness ben­e­fits! How do you keep your­self in the pro­gram? The best way is to sched­ule your daily exer­cise just as you do your other daily activ­i­ties: your daily shower at 7 a.m., lunch break at noon, etc. Plan to walk from, say, 6:30 to 7:00 a.m. before your shower most morn­ings. Before you drift off to sleep at night, tell your­self that the first thing you’re going to do after get­ting up is go for your walk. Soon it will become as much a habit as brush­ing your teeth and tongue. It will start your day off in a nat­ural, invig­o­rat­ing way that will give you a healthy glow and happy frame of mind until bed­time into dream­land, that is a guarantee!

Another option is to take your daily exer­cise walk on your lunch hour, a won­der­ful way to escape the after­noon monot­ony. The increase in cir­cu­la­tion, plus the beauty of the scenery, will invari­ably refresh you and cause you to return to work ready to go. Con­trast this to the lack of energy shown by peo­ple who have spent their lunch hour snooz­ing, smok­ing, drink­ing or eat­ing heavy foods. If you’re hun­gry, stop in a park, etc. on your walk, relax and enjoy an impromptu pic­nic of some organic fruit, raw veg­gies, trail mix, nuts or some soy yogurt, then con­tinue on your walk.

You can also walk when you get off work, to unwind and cleanse your mind and body of the stresses of the day. Pick a nat­ural, beau­ti­ful place. Within 20 min­utes, you will feel like a renewed per­son. Plus you will be work­ing up a gen­uine earned appetite for dinner!

Excerpt from Build Strong Healthy Feet — Chap­ter 1
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• Con­tact air­lines spe­cial ser­vice depart­ment and arrange seat­ing on aisle for more leg room, or bulk­head seat for more leg room and com­fort.
• Exer­cises keep your mus­cles work­ing and pre­vent back spasms.
• Sit and stretch up spine, now, turn your head to the right, then hold for ten sec­onds and bring back to the front, then repeat exer­cise to left. Do 5 sets.
• Keep arms by sides and do this shoul­der roll: shrug shoul­ders upward to ears, now roll shoul­ders back, down and around. Do 5 sets each way.
• Shoes off are best – Lift heels so balls of feet are still on floor, then drop heels back to floor, now stretch toes up and rotate feet around. Do 10 sets each way.
• Walk along aisles and in cor­ri­dors. Do back arches, by plac­ing hands in small of back and gen­tly arch back­wards. Also, do side bends by plac­ing hands on hips and bend gen­tly to right, hold five sec­onds, and back to upright, then bend to left. Do 10 sets.

Exer­cis­ing in the Sky – You Arrive Health­ier
We even jog while thou­sands of feet high in the air, soar­ing the skies in an air­plane. We go to rear of the plane and sta­tion­ary jog and stretch. This gives your bil­lions of cells a mas­sage. We never arrive stiff and tired. Also learn to take advan­tage of spare moments for a sta­tion­ary jog daily, whether an office worker, CEO or house­wife. We all need to exer­cise for healthy bones, a strong heart and a healthy body! Mil­lions are trav­el­ing by air, but for peo­ple with back pain, air travel can be painful and dif­fi­cult. Nar­row seat widths and more seats being added to pack air­planes to capac­ity causes air pas­sen­gers to have less leg room and a prob­lem for those who suf­fer back and leg pain!

Remem­ber to ask for a bulk­head or an exit row seat for more leg room.

Excerpt from Bragg’s Build Strong Healthy Feet — Chap­ter 9
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The mus­cles of the feet, calves, thighs, but­tocks and abdomen all work when you walk. The oxy­gen your body needs to func­tion prop­erly is dis­trib­uted more effec­tively. The heart works harder, send­ing blood cours­ing through your veins to improve your entire cir­cu­la­tion. Even low or moderate-intensity walk­ing can offer many impor­tant car­dio­vas­cu­lar ben­e­fits, accord­ing to med­ical researchers. Reg­u­lar walk­ing: 3 to 4 times a week for 30 to 60 min­utes, depend­ing on inten­sity, can help nor­mal­ize cho­les­terol, blood pres­sure, elim­i­na­tion and also fights osteoporosis.

Walk­ing also reduces anx­i­ety and ten­sion and aids in weight loss. There are 3,500 calo­ries in a pound of fat. If an over­weight per­son walks just 20 min­utes a day and does not change their eat­ing habits, they can start los­ing weight.

Other ben­e­fits include the strength­en­ing and ton­ing of mus­cles, weight con­trol and rid­ding the body of tox­ins through per­spi­ra­tion. A reg­u­lar exer­cise pro­gram such as walk­ing also has a tremen­dously pos­i­tive effect on men­tal atti­tude. Just the act of get­ting out and doing some­thing phys­i­cal is, in itself, a mood ele­va­tor. The increase of blood cir­cu­la­tion in the brain lifts the spir­its, calms you down and makes you feel more self-confident. There are also chem­i­cal reac­tions caused by brisk walk­ing that increase the level of endor­phins, which are vital chem­i­cals in the body that make us feel good!

Walk­ing is an exer­cise that needs no gym, nat­ural med­i­cine that requires no pre­scrip­tion, weight con­trol with­out diet, a cos­metic not sold in a drug­store. It is the tran­quil­izer with­out a pill, the ther­apy with­out a psy­cho­an­a­lyst, the foun­tain of youth that is no leg­end. A walk is a healthy mini-vacation that does not cost a cent. So, it’s easy to see that there is noth­ing to lose and every­thing to gain by invest­ing in a good pair of walk­ing shoes and going for a healthy fun walk.